ExxonMobil reported its biggest quarterly loss in history on Friday when the coronavirus pandemic reduced demand and oil prices.
The Texas-based oil giant lost nearly $ 1.1 billion from April to June, as COVID-19 caused a historic drop in oil prices that hurt its production business.
That came immediately after a loss of $ 610 million in the first three months of the year, which was the first quarterly loss the company recorded since it formed in a 1999 merger, according to ExxonMobil spokesperson Casey Norton.
“The global pandemic and oversupply conditions significantly impacted our second quarter financial results with lower prices, margins and sales volumes,” company president and CEO Darren Woods said in a statement.
Exxon’s 26-cent loss per share in the second quarter was not as bad as the 64-cent loss Wall Street expected, according to Bloomberg data. But it marked a radical change from the $ 3.1 billion profit the company posted in the same period last year.
Revenue fell to $ 32.6 billion, less than half of last year’s levels, while the pandemic depressed oil and gas production by 7 percent to 3.6 million barrels per day, Exxon said. .
But the difficult quarter apparently won’t affect Exxon’s payments to shareholders. The company said on Wednesday it will pay a dividend of 87 cents a share in September, an amount that has been stable since the second quarter of last year.
Other oil giants have suffered amid price collapse caused by pandemic-related blockades and a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia that created excess fuel in the spring. The market deteriorated so much that the price of a benchmark future US crude oil. fell below $ 0 a barrel for the first time in April.
ExxonMobil shares fell 0.4 percent to $ 41.68 at 10:24 am Friday.
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